Despite the series of missteps, "I don't see this as indicative of a larger quality control problem at Microsoft, but rather of a consequence of the high degree of variations that one encounters in the enterprise software market," Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of security and compliance software provider Qualys, said via email.

He said it's virtually impossible for enterprise software vendors to quickly test an update across all the possible hardware and software combinations.

To mitigate potential damage from faulty patches, Kandek suggested customers test the update in a controlled environment before rolling it out across the entire organization.

He also advised organizations to stick to popular hardware and software configurations as much as possible, to increase the chances that a patch will have been tested against their own setup.

Migrating to the cloud is also an option, Kandek said.

"In Microsoft's case it is much easier to make sure Office 365 works perfectly or even hosted SharePoint, than assuring that their software will operate as designed in all different customer environments," he wrote.